Mind Tricks

This guy Gary Hayden that has a column in Mind your Body wrote an article relating 3 incidents when his mind played tricks on him. In the first incident, his mind was so fixed when he entered into a male restroom in a foreign country, that the absence of urinal and presence of pad disposal bin did not alert him to the possiblilty of it being a ladies' toilet. In the second incident, his mind conjured up a story to explain his appearance in a photo when the person was actually someone else. A third situation finds him subconscioulsy ignoring news about rising property prices but instead focusing on views about price bubble, because he has yet to repurchase a property having sold one years ago.

About the time I read this article, I was in a bit of a puzzle about a 8 yr old boy in school. The grandmother of the boy has requested counselling because the boy has a hatred for his mother and stepfather and has mentioned often he will kill them when he grows up. His biological parents are divorced and his mother abandoned him. He was physically abused by his stepfather when he was younger.

I like to encourage my children to help me draw their genogram at the first session. You'll be surprised how interesting they find it, eg. circle for girls and women, squares for boys and men and lines connecting parentage etc. As we draw we talk a bit about the family members. My young friend drew mother, father, grandma and him with 2 brothers staying in the same household. Mother works as a nurse, father works in factory, both come home late from work, hence nenek (grandma) takes care of the children. Also when he needs someone to talk to he turns to his father. Huh? Have I gotten the wrong file? I checked his name against the file more than once throughout the session.
When he further describes himself as a junior prefect and is doing well in his school work, I am convinced the child has very low self esteem and is hiding the truth from people. I know I need to work very slowly with him to gain his trust before he can revisit his past.

One way of getting children or even older clients to be in touch with themselve is sandtray therapy. From a wide array of small figurines and small objects the client is free to instinctively select some to tell their story. The child picked figures to represent his family. Again he picked himself, his mother and brothers and placed them very close in a tight circle. Clearly he 'forgot' his father. "what about nenek (grandma)?" I asked. "Ooh nenek I forgot" and then he picked up another female figure to join the close circle.

Hmm... I thought, maybe his family circumstances have changed, maybe his mother has returned to stay with them. Maybe deep down he still loves his mother which explains why he colours his mum in peach when drawing her. Peach he says is a happy colour for him. So I called nenek. Then the pieces began to fall in place. Nenek says the boy has started to call her 'ibu' (mother) after the mother left home. The person who works as a nurse is actually his cousin and the male father figure is her boyfriend. I shared this with my school counsellor and she says it is not unusual for kids to say things which is totally not the real facts.

Wow I really need to read up much more about child psychology (haha I have never been this diligent in my former job, reading up such that I can do my work a bit better). Reading Hayden's article jolts me to reflect that if a rational adult's mind can do tricks, what more that of a vulnerable child. I feel in this case, there are elements of conjuring, hiding as well as blocking. To reach out to a child's inner thoughts and feelings one has to be really patient. I have to remind myself often to respect the child's own pace and never to impose my own agenda in the process.